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Article: Web worms: Code Red to Warhol.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- August 25, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Striking on July 19, the so-called Code Red worm infected more than 360,000 computers throughout the world in less than 14 hours. The rapid rate at which the worm spread, without human intervention, vividly demonstrated how such a rogue computer program can interfere with the Internet.
The Code Red worm failed in achieving its goal: overwhelming the White House Web site by attacking it with simultaneous messages from all the infected computers. Nonetheless, it caused considerable disruption for everyone with vulnerable systems. It could have been much worse.
With a more efficient infection strategy, a malicious programmer could build a worm that attacks ...